Macquarie Telecom has announced it will sponsor two scholarships in cyber security at Western Sydney University next year as its contribution to heading off a looming skills crisis in the cyber security industry.

“After participating in the Prime Minister’s cyber security summit in July this year, it became clear to me that business needs to step up and make a direct contribution to filling what is emerging as a yawning skills gap in a fast developing field.” said Macquarie Telecom managing director of Government and Hosting, Aidan Tudehope.

“The Government recognised the importance of the industry – and the huge national opportunity for it to become a foundation of future prosperity – by announcing the Cyber Security Growth Centre in the recent innovation statement.

“Businesses of all sizes need to get the message that cyber security is their problem. It’s not a problem for governments to fix on their behalf, or for universities to magically resolve,” he said.
“This is also not an industry where the private sector can take the lazy way out of importing all the necessary skills.

“The particular sensitivities around cyber security means that many practitioners working with Government systems, for example, need to be security cleared, and there are citizenship requirements attached to this,” Mr Tudehope said.

“So the competition for the best and brightest will become more intense, and today’s skills shortage could easily become a full-blown skills crisis unless more people take a forward thinking approach and invest in national skills development.”

Macquarie Telecom provides front-line security to 42% of Federal Government agencies through its Secure Internet Gateway.

“Our team understands the importance of cyber security and the complexities of handling vast amounts of data created by an increasingly connected world.

“We understand the criticality in developing skill sets that understand these complexities
and the challenges to tackle cyber security threats at a cyber-national scale hence our
investment in these scholarships” said Mr Tudehope.

Applications for the Macquarie Telecom Cyber Security Scholarship are open from now until
6th March 2016. Detail will be posted here.